The Mary Riley Styles Library in Falls Church isn’t bursting at the seams right now.

But without a consistent effort to keep only the most appealing materials on the shelves, the library director could see that day approaching.

“If we don’t remove books sometimes, we’d walk in here and there would be books on the floor, books up to the ceiling, and you wouldn’t have any place to sit,” Megan Dotzler said during a Sept. 17 briefing in front of the city’s Library Board of Trustees.

The Little City’s lone municipal library holds about 120,000 books. In the past year, just over 10,000 titles were added and slightly more than 7,000 were removed.

The library staff uses technology programs to determine what materials are a hit with readers, and which ones are finding no takers.

Book stacks at Mary Riley Styles Library (staff photo by Scott McCaffrey)

“We can really drill in … and see where we need to add books or remove them,” said Billette Ripy, the library’s technical-services supervisor.

According to one statistical analysis focused on nonfiction works, 82% of the available titles at the library receive what is described as normal use, while 15% have more demand than availability and 3% have little interest from the public.

Library staff work off a policy adopted in 2021 that sets parameters for acquiring new materials. Readers’ interest in a particular title or topic is one component.

“How many copies of a book we have is related to how many people put it on hold,” Dotzler said. “If we see that a certain amount of people have put a book on hold, we’ll buy additional copies. The ratio kind of depends on our budget.”

For the fiscal year that began in July, library staff has $115,000 to spend on physical books, along with $11,300 on periodicals, Dotzler told trustees. The budget also sets aside $3,500 for DVDs and $161,000 for electronic materials.

In terms of popularity, physical materials still hold the edge at the library, with more than 300,000 checked out in the last fiscal year compared to just under 200,000 for electronic materials, according to annual figures recently presented to City Council members.

Mary Riley Styles Library (via BKV Group)

Those 500,000 checkouts equate to about 31 per Falls Church resident, “which strikes me as a lot,” said trustee Robert Leopold.

Part of the reason for the high number: the library’s clientele extends well beyond the city’s 2.2 square miles. The 30,000-plus cardholders compare to a city population of about half that.

“We have more accounts than population. That’s the only library I’ve ever worked at that has had that,” said Dotzler.

Unlike larger library systems, which typically have a staff devoted entirely to adding and removing items from the collection, Mary Riley Styles Library relies on staff in each department to make those calls.

“I want to let you know how much work they have put in,” Dotzler told library trustees.

Leopold agreed. “It’s an astonishingly efficient staff,” he said.

The books most likely to be removed from circulation contain outdated information, are worn (“grubby” in library terms) or simply are not being checked out.

Sometimes, “interests change,” said Dotzler, who was selected as new library director in September 2024. She previously had served as a staff member in Arlington’s library system.

Library officials try to find new homes for those retired books whenever possible, Dotzler told trustees.